art – Stumbling with Confidence

Adventures in HE: time for a Skunk Works?

A few years ago, a UK university established a new initiative with funding from central government. The initiative was one of about 70 such initiatives across the HE sector which were established in the hope that, within the five years of the funding, the universities involved would have taken risks and pioneered innovative learning approaches that could be adopted and/or adapted across the sector.

The university in question established a project with the aim of developing more practice-based arts provision within the university, establishing more links between the university and external artists and arts organisations, and to increase the links between the subject areas within the creative and performing arts programmes within the university. The project rapidly established a reputation within the university for taking risks and for having a different way of looking at things. It was also known for having a different way of talking about things and even a different way of naming things, for example, modules. A critical factor in the project’s ability to forge an innovative path was that its director had been brought in from outside academia, and was relatively and refreshingly unencumbered by things like history and precedence and the engrooved customs, practices and discourses of the institution.

The director had created a Skunk Works.

Skunk Works are, typically, small and loosely structured groups of people who research and develop a project for the sake of innovation. There are several important and essential features of a Skunk Works: one is that it operates independently of the normal research and development operations of the company or organisation; another is that, in order to achieve unusual results, the people working on the project work in ways that are outside the normal ways of working.

One of the major projects initiated by the director was the development of a pilot MA in interdisciplinary arts practice. The aims of the course were to explore and extend the boundaries of various arts disciplines, and all aspects of the course were designed to be innovative and radical – the curriculum, the delivery, and the assessment. As with all courses, the proposal had to go through the university’s validation process and there were intense discussions about what might or might not be acceptable, especially given the relatively traditional academic culture of the university. The director stuck to her guns and, much to the surprise and, indeed, chagrin of some colleagues, the university validated a course that included modules called ‘Adventures in Interdisciplinarity’ and ‘Further Adventures in Interdisciplinarity’ in which the course participants– a mixture of recent graduates and mature, part-time students– gathered on a Friday and worked intensively through the weekend on various experimental projects and exploratory assignments with artists, directors, film-makers and composers.

These ‘Adventures’ were designed to provide unusual, typically hazardous (creatively, intellectually, etc.), experiences or activities. Calling the modules ‘Adventures’ was a very deliberate move and was highly resonant of Ronald Barnett’s call to educators to ‘hang onto a language of delight, wonder, care, excitement, fun, engagement and love– the language in which a student is caught and even entranced’ (Barnett, 2008).

At a time of particularly rapid change with a host of serious challenges facing higher education, perhaps establishing a Skunk Works and investing in the space to breathe, to invent, to imagine, to innovate, and to create something that is different, exciting, and genuinely transformational might be a very good and beneficial move.

^{Barnett, R. 2008. A will to learn. London: Open University Press.}

^{Image created by AI}

^{About me:}

^{I am an independent higher education consultant and co-founder of the educational consultancy Ciel Associates specialising in organisational and transformational change and enhancing learning, teaching and assessment. I have over thirty years experience in a wide range of higher education providers both as a consultant and, before that, in a number of management, leadership and strategic roles. My work is informed by my belief in the transformational power of education and a commitment to enabling institutions to create meaningful and sustainable change. Contact me at Ciel Associates} .

”It’s cheating Jim, but not as we know it”: the problematic arts of plagiarism

Recently, while the academic world attempts to negotiate its path through the minefield posed by Generative AI, I was looking at some university policies about academic integrity and stumbled across these two statements:

There are few intellectual offences more serious than plagiarism in academic and professional contexts.

To submit a paper or comparable assignment that is not truly the product of your own mind and skill is to commit plagiarism. To put it bluntly, plagiarism is the act of stealing the ideas and/or expression of another and representing them as your own. It is a form of cheating and a kind of scholastic and professional dishonesty which can incur severe penalties. It is important, therefore, that you understand what constitutes plagiarism, so that you will not unwittingly jeopardize your college career.

Reading those dire warnings about academic misconduct took me back to the now seemingly far off days when we obsessed about plagiarism and you couldn’t move for workshops and seminars on topics such as ‘Designing Out Plagiarism From Assessment‘. But it also reminded me that for anyone with an arts background or a knowledge of art, literature or music history, the idea of plagiarism as a black and white issue is an absurd idea. There’s a lot of grey.

Consider this famous engraving of ‘The Judgment of Paris’ by Raphael, created circa 1510-20, and pay particular attention to the group of three figures on the lower right. Do they remind you of anything?

Let’s now skip over the engravings made soon after by Raimondo (left) and Marco Dente da Ravenna (right)….

….and consider this famous painting from the 19th century.

As Manet’s figures are clearly based on the three figures in those engravings is the painting ‘truly the product of his mind and skill’?

But the chain of ‘borrowing’ continues. Picasso sees the Manet painting and creates this, at least acknowledging his immediate source (or at least the Musee Picasso is acknowledging the source)

Then, in 1981, this album cover appears:

Or consider these album covers and that university statement about there being ‘few intellectual offences more serious than plagiarism in academic and professional contexts.’

It seems clear, particularly in regard to art works, that a conception of the creative process that imagines that new works are original and autonomous may often be at odds with actual acts of creation that in many instances involve copying, directly referencing, adapting and other uses of existing works.

While some artists e.g. Manet and Picasso are lauded for their appropriation of previous art, the popular artist Jack Vettriano, who died recently, was frequently dismissed by the art establishment for being derivative and unoriginal (as well as popular!). The often quoted example is that the two dancing figures in his most famous work ‘The Singing Butler’ (section below) – the most popular art print in the UK – were virtually direct copies of the dancing figures from The Illustrator’s Figure Reference Manual.

In a number of disciplines and fields of study terms such influence, intertextuality, formulaic cultural production, appropriation and borrowing are important parts of the disciplinary discourse. In art and literary criticism, terms such as intertextuality, allusion, quotation, and influence are used, In musicology terms used to discuss relationships between musical texts include borrowing, self-borrowing, transformative imitation, quotation, allusion, homage, modeling, emulation, recomposition, influence, paraphrase, and indebtedness. Brahms, for example, openly admitted the strong influence of Beethoven. His First Symphony is sometimes referred to as ‘Beethoven’s Tenth’ and Brahms famously stated, “You have no idea how it feels to hear his footsteps constantly behind you.” In the context of plagiarism in popular music, the work of the forensic musicologist Joe Bennett is worth reading and listening to. One of the problems with identifying plagiarism is that, if and when it comes to court and as Bennett also makes clear in his work and research, what sounds superficially similar – certainly on first hearing – to a jury of ‘ordinary people’ is actually far more complex. Certain combinations of notes and chords are so ubiquitous across the musical landscape that they have become ‘commonplace’ items and are, in fact, common property.

As examples accumulate it becomes apparent, as Jonathan Lethem wrote in The Ecstasy of Plagiarism (2007) ‘that appropriation, mimicry, quotation, allusion, and sublimated collaboration consist of a kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all forms and genres in the realm of cultural production.’

The final example, returning to the two images at the start, is the cautionary tale of a book cover from 1974 and a very large painting that was a Turner Prize finalist in 2000. The full story of the plagiarism furore it caused and the law suit that followed can be read here https://artquest.org.uk/artlaw-article/originality/ , but here are the bare bones.

In 1974, Robert Heinlein’s book ‘Double Star’ was published with a cover created by the sci-fi artist Anthony Roberts. In 2000, the artist Glenn Brown’s large painting ‘The Love of Shepherds’ was chosen as a finalist in that year’s Turner Prize. Brown frequently uses the work of other artists in developing his large-scale work and is known for the use of art historical references in his paintings (as did Manet and Picasso). Starting with reproductions from the works of other artists, his biography states that he “transforms the appropriated image by changing its colour, position and size”.

Anthony Roberts was alerted to the similarity with his own painting for the book cover after a visitor to the Turner Prize exhibition noticed the similarity and the story hit the headlines. Roberts sued Brown and eventually the case was settled out of court. The painting is now titled ‘The Love of Shepherds’ (after ‘Doublestar’ by Anthony Roberts).

When a university states that students must “understand what constitutes plagiarism, so that you will not unwittingly jeopardize your college career” perhaps they should clarify precisely what they mean. If they are referrring to plagiarism in a purely academic context i.e. writing essay, dissertations etc. then what is and is not plagiarism is, or should be clear. But beyond that, particularly in the areas of creative practices, we enter the ‘Grey Zone’, and we should be ensuring that understanding plagiarism also means enabkling students successfully and effectively to understand, appreciate and negotiate their way through that grey zone.

We’d never get away with it now!

6 problems and developing creative confidence in students

LIPA (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts) welcomed its first students in 1996. In those early days, as a very rare brand new higher education institution, LIPA had many of the typical characteristics of a ‘start-up’: exciting, risk-taking, a bit of a roller-coaster. Looking back at that time, we were certainly operating on the edge of chaos.

I was Head of Performance Design and had designed and written most of the Performance Design curriculum. One of the things I was really keen on was the idea of ‘de-schooling’: getting the new first year students out of the more creativity inhibiting habits and expectations they had arrived with.

So, during induction week, alongside the usual introductory sessions, the handing out of timetables, module handbooks, etc., we set the students six visual ‘problems’ that they had to solve before the end of that first semester.

There were some interesting strings attached to that assignment:

the students were on their own, they could not discuss the problems with their fellow students or with any of their tutors
their work would not be assessed
all their ‘solutions’ would be shown in an exhibition at the end of the semester which would have a proper opening and an invited guest list.

A number of colleagues, when they heard about this, thought we were mad, confident that the students would never do it as it wasn’t being assessed.

The six problems included the following:

Create a self-portrait in any medium.
Create a map of how you get from your bed to the studio in the morning
Take three matchboxes and create an object or objects using all the contents and the boxes themselves
The Black Square Problem: using six black squares against a white ground illustrate a series of words e.g. chaos, love, kindness, growth etc.

(To be honest, nearly thirty years on, I can’t remember the other two problems! One, I think, was something to do with delineating space, and I have no idea what the sixth one was. I was hoping it might come to me as I was writing this).

The day the students came in to set up the exhibition was an extraordinary day. As each student brought in their work, their peers gathered round to see and discuss what was before them. The sense of collegiality and excitement was palpable as was the sense of creativity and imagination at play.

Some of those solutions remain clear in my mind to this day. Here are just three:

J., a German student who had grown up in East Germany before unification, had taken the three matchboxes. She had flattened out the three drawers and stuck them together to make a flat sheet. On the sheet, she had drawn three musical staves (five lines each) using the ends of some burnt matches. Then, using the matches as musical notes, she stuck them along the staves in such a way as to create the opening bars of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’. The remaining matches were stuck around the sheet to make a frame. Two of the outer matchbox containers were used as labels for the work. But where was the third? It was stuck on the back of the sheet and used to hang the sheet onto a hook on the wall.

(I know I have a photograph of it somewhere!)

C. had attached a very large, rectangle of black card on the wall. It was in landscape format and across the middle, horizontally, ran a c.4cm strip of paper which was covered in dozens of identical, narrow vertical stripes of red, orange, light blue and dark blue. It looked like a beautiful spectrogram. In the bottom right hand corner was written ‘C’s map’. I remember staring at this with a colleague and wondering what did this map represent. Eventually, we called C. over and asked her to explain. It turned out that she lived about 2 miles from LIPA and it was a very cold day when she started making the map. What she had done was to walk from her warm bedroom, through the cold streets to LIPA taking a temperature reading every 20m or so. The different colours represented different temperatures. Red/Orange = warm, Light Blue/Dark Blue=cool/cold. When we asked what the warm strip right in the centre was, C. answered that her measured steps had taken to her to a hot air outlet of a shop.

T. had really struggled with the Black Square problem. Just couldn’t get his head around it. Sitting at breakfast a day or so before the exhibition opening, he was pondering the problem to the extent that he forgot he’d put a slice of bread in the toaster. Suddenly out popped a square of blackened toast. It was one of those Eureka moments. T. had found his solution to the black square problem. His solution consisted of illustrating the words using a series of four pieces of square black toast stuck to the windows of the exhibition space.

The exhibition opening was a great success. All the students managed to produce a creative solution to each of the problems…some of them truly extraordinary. There were 2D works, 3D works, video, audio, animation. Some made one laugh. Others, particularly some of the self-portraits, were rather disturbing. The strange, bloodied doll in the box which had a peep hole haunts me still!

Art work. Wooden bok with peep hole. Through the peephole you see a doll sitting in the corner of the box, with a dribble of blood coming from her mouth.

All the art works were presented and lit beautifully. The purpose of the whole enterprise was, of course, nothing to do with the actual problems or the exhibition of work. It was all about confidence, enabling the students to realise that not only did they have some wonderful creative ideas but they could work on their own and create and produce wonder-full work.

The offer of the exhibition was key to getting the students motivated and committed to the project despite there being no assessment. The exhibition made it clear that we valued their ideas and the work they produced. Too often, work into which students have poured their heart and soul is simply handed in or submitted electronically without even a ‘thank you’. I recall one department in another institution where essays and dissertations were simply posted into a box fixed to the wall near the departmental office.

The six visual problems project demonstrated that if you create interesting assignments and make it clear that you really care about the work students produce, assessment isn’t a given. In recent decades, higher education has developed to the point where the culture is one of ‘if it moves, assess it!’. The solving and exhibiting of the six visual problems proved that need not, necessarily, always be the case.

Could we get away with it now?

Reflection: schooldays, sitting quietly and making marks on paper

^{My first attempt at life drawing c. 1968}

During a conversation about education with a colleague who is an eminent and well-respected professor of education, he said vehemently ‘I hated school’. Now he and I are probably of a similar generation, but my school experience in the 1960s was rather more positive.

I went to a rather academic boy’s grammar school in London, where corporal punishment had been abolished some years previously. The focus was very much on getting into Oxbridge or at least a ‘decent’ redbrick university. I, however, was interested in becoming an artist.

The art room – run by Mr. Potter – was located at the far end of one wing, up in the roof space. It was, nevertheless, a light and airy space and I enjoyed the many hours spent in there. I wanted to do Art for ‘A’ level and to go to art school. The problem was that the ‘A’ level requirements at that time were stultifyingly restrictive (I don’t think they’ve changed much). One of the requirements was a still-life painting, and I distinctly recall Mr. Potter looking at my somewhat surreal and expressionist rendering and saying, sympathetically, “That’s very interesting, but that will never do”.

When I asked him why, he explained that the A level required an ultra-realist painting. Any other approach would be deemed a failure. But he then said, encouragingly, that if any of the great masters of modern art, the Cubists, the Expressionists, the Surrealists, the Fauves etc had taken ‘A’ level art, not only would they have failed but there would have been a demand for psychiatric testing!

At this stage I knew that the school and the requirements of the exam board were unable to support me in creating a decent portfolio of work to get into art school.

So I went to see the Headmaster: a kindly, liberal man and a much respected leader and teacher. The school was a rugby playing school (I was actually a very good fly-half at the time) and everything stopped on Wednesday afternoons for sports. Not far from the school, in north London, was the then renowned Camden Institute, which had a wonderful reputation for its adult education art classes led by established artists. I asked the Headmaster if, instead of running around the rugby field on a Wednesday afternoon, I could attend the Institute’s art classes. He agreed on the proviso that I would occasionally show him the work I was doing.

Walking into and taking part in the life class studio on my first visit was a revelation. I don’t think I’d seen a fully naked woman before except in paintings (we also had male models) but not only did I feel immediately welcome and at home, but the whole experience of sitting quietly at an easel, observing the life model very closely, and making marks on paper was extraordinarily powerful. The only sounds in the room were the slight hiss of the gas fire near the model, the occasional sound of charcoal scraping on paper, and the hushed conversation of the tutor and whoever he was talking to.

Fifty plus years later, I still use that ‘sitting quietly, observing or thinking, and making marks on paper’ in my own work, and in the workshops and seminars I run.

Beyond excellence…..towards wonder

In higher education (and in education generally) we obsess about excellence. So what does excellence mean?

Going by the result of the debate on excellence at an academic conference, there is a clear majority who feel that the term has lost credibility and value. When all institutions are either ‘excellent’ or, at the very least, ‘striving for excellence’ (see university mission statements below) then we are witnessing a lot of sound, but hopefully not fury, signifying nothing. Excellence, in Bill Readings’¹ memorable term, has become ‘de-referentialised’. Turning to the dictionary provides little assistance. In the Concise Oxford ‘to excel’ is defined as to surpass or to be pre-eminent (i.e. to be better than the majority), whereas ‘excellence’ is defined as ‘very good’.

Whatever meaning ‘excellence’ once had has become lost in a blizzard of hyperbole. The fate of excellence follows in the tradition of other terms such as ‘community’ and, more recently, ‘creativity’, whose meaning has become devalued and decontextualised through over- and inappropriate use.

In the arts, the term excellence is rarely if ever used as a descriptor except – and this may be relevant in considering educational achievement – in relation to the application or demonstration of skill or craft. Academics, students and arts practitioners tend to avoid the ‘E’ word. The theatrical cliché has never been: “You were excellent, darling”. ‘Wonderful’ is truly a much better word than ‘excellent’ to describe high artistic achievement. Rather than excellent’s rather hard-edged, triumphalist implication of being better than others, ‘wonderful’, i.e. full of wonder, has a sense of the remarkable, the extraordinary, the truly successful that is the mark of the highest quality work.

Excellence, it must be said, is much favoured by arts politicians and bureaucrats who use it both aspirationally and as a justification for funding. Excellence attracts rewards and prizes. But the use of the term has more to do with product branding (as it has in higher education) than with a real concern with the subtle complexities of quality and value.

Here is a typical example: one of our leading UK arts funding bodies, in its mission statement, states: “We believe the arts to be the foundation of a confident and cultured society. They challenge and inspire us. They bring beauty, excitement and happiness into our lives. They help us to express our identity as individuals, as communities and as a nation”.

Wonderful! But then they go and ruin it by reverting to corporate-speak and saying they are going to “serve the people … by fostering arts of excellence through funding, development, research and advocacy”. An external examiner I knew, having seen what was – by general consensus – a remarkable, successful, extraordinary, inspiring … yes, wonderful piece of final-year practical work was dismayed to find that the two internal examiners, who also thought the work was remarkable, successful etc had agreed a mark of 75%. He asked them to start at 100%, and argue persuasively for marks to be deducted. With the assessment criteria in their hands they struggled to get below 95%. To describe that work as merely ‘excellent’ would have been insufficient. It was beyond excellence.

That is perhaps what we should be striving for and, in doing so, we need to look beyond our obsession with trying to define, achieve, assess and reward excellence.

As the old saying goes: education is, or ought to be, a wonder-full thing.

References

1 Readings, B. (1997) The University in Ruins. Harvard University Press